Monday, December 1, 2014

November tends to be a little dim and
dank, but as the month comes to an end, we remember to be grateful for the
abundance we have. And then December
brings all those twinkly little lights, more and more as the month goes on.

In December, Saturn leaves dank,
brooding Scorpio and enters the lively fire sign Sagittarius (for the next two
and a half years). Saturn, as the planet
of limitation and restriction, is never exactly perky, but in Sagittarius,
there’s a stronger sense of possibilities. Sagittarius is about adventure, excitement, passion,
and wider horizons.

Sagittarius brings a broader and more
philosophical way of seeing the world, so it lends itself to community
progress. Saturn was in Sagittarius in
1957, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, and when President Eisenhower sent federal
troops to Arkansas to protect the Little Rock Nine. It was
in Sagittarius when the peace symbol was inaugurated by the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament. It was there when the European Economic
Community, a precursor to the European Union, was founded.

Sagittarius is also a sign of
travel. Saturn was also in Sagittarius
when Jack Kerouac published “On the Road”, Edmund Hillary went to the South
Pole, Sputnik was launched, and the Boeing 707 flew for the first time. Who knows where Saturn in Sagittarius will
take us? Already the rights of
immigrants are in the spotlight, and as the newest wave of immigrants become
more established, the country will grow in innovation, creativity, and
perspective.

This November, we’ve seen continual
lessons around the racial divide in the US, and these have to do with Saturn in
Scorpio’s tendency to dredge up deeply-rooted feelings. But the future of these movements is more
hopeful, thanks to Saturn’s entrance into Sagittarius in December.

The movement in Ferguson was fueled
by immediate outrage but it is taking a long-term perspective. There has been no obvious victory, since the
frightened policeman who killed Michael Brown was not indicted. But that was not really a surprise. And victory is not always obvious.

Real change comes more incrementally
and invisibly, often in actions not taken. Real change is the gun that doesn’t fire, the
camera that records a response that once went undetected, the policeman who learns about unconscious
racism. The Ferguson struggle is just
another chapter in a much larger struggle linking all of us here, one which brings
up some intrinsic questions about our morality as a nation.

Real change comes slowly, and often invisibly,
but it’s still a question of seeing what we haven’t seen before. That’s always the first and most painful
step. The Saturn-in-Scorpio step was
seeing the truth, framed in stark terms of life and death, and the Saturn-in-Sagittarius
step will be incorporating what we’ve learned into a new social
philosophy.

And so white people in the U.S. have
seen some new truths. They’ve thought
about what it’s like for the parents of an African-American teenage boy,
walking down the street in any American city.
First they saw it with Trayvon Martin, and then with Michael Brown. It might’ve been easy to disown Zimmerman’s
actions, to see him as an overzealous anomaly.
It’s not so easy to disown a policeman, paid by the government to do its
work, protected by the government in the end.

There could be quite a few
confrontations in December, and confrontation can bring even more clarity. This month, we experience the sixth exact pass
of the revolutionary aspect that began in 2011:
the Uranus/Pluto square.

There is an eager lunging towards
change these days. We can taste our
desire for it. People are imagining
change, creating a wide spectrum of new scenarios that match their
fantasies. I’m doing it too, and in my
world, there’s peer pressure but no coercion, anger but little violence, and
sadness but rarely desolation. But there
are other visions, a multitude of them, some very much at odds with mine.

As I get older, I think: small steps are okay, as long as they’re in
the right direction. But the Uranus/Pluto
square is not about small steps. It’s lightning-abrupt, powerful, and
definite.

Uranus and Pluto are both about
change. Uranus is about novelty,
innovation, vibration, electricity, radical social movements, and scientific progress. It’s represented on our screens these days as
a huge robotic, armor-clad hero, supported by up-to-the-minute technology.

Science is in a combative pose these
days, but still, there are no angry Luddites in the streets. Nobody is suggesting that we do away with
technology, even the conservatives who think the Bible is the last word on
everything, and that the earth was created 6000 years ago, and that we never
actually went to the moon. They still
want their own tools - their cars and
computers and factory equipment - to be modern and efficient. They haven’t become Amish. So it’s not that science is being wiped out,
but that people keep trying to shackle it – as they’ve done so often through
the centuries, often in the name of the church.

So enter
Uranus in Aries. It’s science fighting to be free. It’s truth, burning for liberty. And it has its hero myth, since scientists
know they have an important role in rescuing the earth from the upcoming crisis. Science has sullied air and water, but
science can save them. The danger is
that science can identify too much with its hero mythos, seeing itself as
Superman instead of fallible and human.

And what is this high-tech robot
fighting? On the other side of the ring,
there’s Pluto in Capricorn. Pluto is
slow, buried power, and it’s much harder to show on the movie screens. It’s the Shadow. It’s the black-and-white mystery film with
its twitching suspense. And it’s in
Capricorn, the sign of structure, tradition and formality, where it’s
especially cold. Think old stone
walls. Think crystal skyscrapers going
up to the sky. Think the quiet, intricate
hierarchies of corporate finance.

Pluto moves slowly, more slowly than
any other planet, and yet it has to do with major transformation. That’s because the power of transformation is
underneath everything. Everything
falls.

So Uranus wants the structure to fall
immediately, right now, and Pluto is basically telling it, “Wait, child. It will all be gone, and there will be
something else in its place.” Who knows
what that will be? Pluto will be
Capricorn for nine more years, and in that time, we could all become vassals of
the Chinese. Maybe we should be paying a
lot more attention to the struggle that’s going on in Hong Kong.

What is our path to wisdom in all
this? We have the momentum, when it
comes to Uranus in Aries. But we need to
channel our anger, our urge for freedom, and our scientific know-how. To me, that says that enlightenment should be
our goal. We need to enlighten ourselves
and each other, to be willing to see what we haven’t seen before.

And when it comes to Pluto in
Capricorn, it’s also about listening.
There is some rumbling deep, deep underground. We may not be standing on this earth anymore
when it reaches the surface. But we
may. And if we are here, it may be there’s
no technique or tool that will save us.
But there may be. And it may be
that today’s freedom fighters are the ones honing the tools, teaching people to
understand what’s all around us.

Friday, October 31, 2014

It’s
Halloween, the time when the membrane between the worlds is especially thin,
when we honor our ancestors and appreciate all they’ve given us. About seven weeks ago, I lost my dad, and so
when I think of the spirit world today, I think of him. I’m grateful not just for the life he gave
me, but for the lessons he taught me. And
when I open the box of photographs he left me, all these other ancestors crowd
out, and each life has a message for me.

There’s
something very essential about this time of the year. People masquerade, as if they know that these
personalities we adopt, these roles we play, are just costumes of the
moment. We’re all elemental forces,
walking for a time in this world. We
have just enough time to draw a few strokes in its pattern, but not enough time
to look at it and see how it all fits together.
That’s something our descendants do for us, after we’re gone.

It
makes sense that this time comes a month after the balancing act of the fall
equinox. At that time, we measure the
dark and the light and see that they’re equal.
At this time, we measure life and death, and see that they are also two
sides of the same coin.

Yes,
I’m writing this on Halloween, but the whole of the month has this intensity, this
essentialist flavor. The lightest moments
in November are actually the first days of the month, when Mercury sextiles Jupiter,
and everybody gets that playful vibe.
After this, the energy intensifies, becomes deeper and more
introspective.

This
is Saturn’s last month in Scorpio.
Archetypically, Saturn is the Crone, the Old Wise One, the Teacher. Scorpio is the sign of secrets, death, and
transformation. Saturn has been in Scorpio
for two and a half years, and many of her lessons have been about death. It’s been a time when a grim virus has decimated a continent, and when
religious fervor has stepped up its hopeless love affair with the AK-47.

During
this last month, Saturn will have visitors, as the sun, Mercury and Venus are
all going through Scorpio, and each in turn will conjunct Saturn. It’s as if each one goes up to the Crone and
asks her for a deeper wisdom. Venus, the
goddess of love, conjoins Saturn on November 12, and love becomes heavier,
sadder, and more serious. The sun joins Saturn
on November 18, and brings up questions about authority and identity. And Mercury conjuncts Saturn on November 25,
with questions about how to think, and how to learn what we need to know.

Mars,
the planet of action, makes its own pilgrimage this month. It’s in Capricorn, the sign ruled by Saturn,
and it conjuncts Pluto, the planet that rules Scorpio, on November 10. And so Mars pauses too, and accepts its
lesson from the Old Wise One. Its
preference is for the thrill of spontaneous action, but now it has to become
accountable, to see the underlying consequences of action.

And
so it’s a sobering month, punctuated by these Saturn moments. The energy of Saturn is conservative, and its
wisdom tends to be responsible, pragmatic and grounding. It focuses on preserving rather than
changing, on the known rather than the possible, and on a realistic assessment
of existing resources.

It
seems like this would lend itself to a healthier and more ecologically sound
way of living on the earth. But it’s not
easy to move from a society that’s based on elitist and expansive principles to
one that is truly conservative. A truly
conservative system would conserve trees, land, air, and water, and would be
friendlier to families. It wouldn’t
deport fathers, for example, forcing them to leave their children. A truly conservative system would encourage
people to grow food, and to learn how to fix things, rather than urging them to
consume more and more.

So
I do think we could take back the word “conservative” any day now.

The
Saturnine lessons of the month will tell us where we are going wrong, where we
are deviating from an earth-friendly, sustainable way of living. Because Saturn is in Scorpio, the lessons
will be intense, deep, and shadowy. We’ll
peer into those shadows and catch glimpses of all the things we usually refuse
to see.

I
do think people are waking up to the contradictions inherent in the world we
live in. But when we come back to
reality, we can only come back so far.
None of us is ready to see the world as it really is. And so people come up with scapegoats, invent
enemies, and imagine them with more power than they truly possess. And then
they get snagged there, and their way of being conservative involves resisting
these outside forces, one way or another.

And
yet all these villains we see, they’re usually about as dangerous as the masked
children that will run through the neighborhood tonight. When tomorrow’s dawn breaks, we’ll ask
ourselves, Where did they go? Someday
people will ask the same question about us.
And they’ll also look to see what we left behind.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

For lots of folks, Labor Day signals
the summer’s end. By the calendar,
there’s still three weeks before the autumn equinox appears with its seasonal
shift. But really, playtime is over.

And actually, that’s always
true during the last month of summer, when the sun moves into Virgo. The emphasis shifts to organizing, fixing,
mending, getting needed work done. And
as this September begins, Mars and Saturn – the planet of action and the planet
of responsibility – are together in the hyper-focused sign Scorpio. So it’s a time when everybody is getting down
to business.

Of course, one can be very
business-like, very efficient, and still not get anything done. Today’s paper tells the story of the hundreds of National Guard troops who’ve been deployed to the Texas border, and who
spend their days in sweltering body armor, staring at the brush. Bored, uncomfortable people with guns are
never a particularly good idea.

When it comes to promoting
his presidential ambitions, Gov. Rick Perry, on the other hand, is being very
efficient. He’s using handy, available
resources to demonstrate what a serious fellow he is, when it comes to border
security. A good politician knows how to
read the headlines, sort out the things that make people feel insecure, and
make a big show of addressing those insecurities.

So, yes, Mars and Saturn
together make for efficiency, but even though their sign, Scorpio, promotes
definite action, it’s not a practical or logical sign. Like all the water signs, it’s about
underlying feelings – including fears, hatreds, resentment, anxiety, and
paranoia. We are all knotted up with
these things, but people are more conscious of these inner demons when there
are strong placements in Scorpio. The
demons are more likely to take shape.

With the Mars/Saturn
conjunction, some strong walls can be built – walls of distrust, anger and
prejudice. Mars militarizes things,
adding way more combat gear than anyone could need, whether the enemy is a kid
walking down the middle of the street, or one crossing a river. Saturn affirms structure, discipline, and responsibility, and tends towards inflexible rules.

So there is an order to
things. There’s a very strong
exoskeleton, and a definite chain of command. But the center is still mush. That swampy center is the central human fear
of anything or anyone different. And
without a strong center, there can be no real security.

Another thing that’s emerging
these days is the question of entitlement.
This has become a more prominent issue in the last few years, especially
with Occupy Wall Street’s emphasis on the 99%. But now questions around entitlement are being
demonstrated more openly, with Jupiter moving through the royal sign Leo.

And there’s an ongoing
tension between Jupiter in Leo and Pluto in Capricorn - a conflict between earth and fire,
between pragmatism and glory.

Pluto in Capricorn is
basically pragmatic, and entitlement is enormously wasteful. In fact, those who are entitled are
encouraged – you might even say required – to waste resources. I know this, as a citizen of the US. It takes a lot more effort to minimize one’s
carbon footprint than to go along with the usual spend-and-throw-away
routine. There’s often no way to repair, to share, or
even to surround yourself with things that will last. And so I join everyone else, tossing out things
that represent precious natural resources and the lives of laborers.

The less entitlement there
is, the more equable the distribution – not only of things, but of power and
choices – the less likely there is to be waste.
There really is enough to go around.
I believe that, although this truth has yet never been tested in the
history of the world.

What Jupiter in Leo gives to
the world is glory, glamor, and glitz, and we’ve all gladly embraced it,
allowing Ali Baba fantasies to light up the more boring corners of our lives. It seems we need kings, celebrities, and the
uber-wealthy to embody this fantasy. But
maybe Pluto in Capricorn is saying that we no longer have time for this
childish play-acting, in the face of a world which isn’t working all that well.
Maybe, when hundreds of thousands of
fish are floating in Mexican lakes, when colonies of honeybees are dying all
over the world, when monarch butterflies have become rare, there is a need to
get serious.

But if Jupiter in Leo’s sin
is conspicuous consumption, Pluto in Capricorn’s sin is a tendency to a wintery
austerity. And along with this, there’s
an automatic deference to tradition. Some
traditions are useful, and others – not so much - but there’s a large bloc that
believes everything was simpler way back when, when everybody knew their
place. Tea Partiers and Islamic
Jihadists have a lot in common, wanting women in kitchens/veils and gay people
invisible/dead.

The answer is to find the
best expression of both these influences.
Pluto in Capricorn is essentially practical and responsible, and can
give some useful answers to the new questions confronting our species. How can we live simply, but in a way that’s
different from our fairy-tale versions of the way our ancestors lived?

And Jupiter in Leo has a lot
to contribute too. Leo is the most
flamboyantly creative sign in the zodiac, and we will always need musicians,
poets, story-tellers, actors, and comedians.
And they are everywhere. We don’t
need to take a few of these and turn them into gods or kings. We can move towards a world in which everyone
has what they need, and there is still plenty of time both to create art and to
enjoy it.

This world is possible. And, as in every period of heightened
tension, we’re pushed to figure out how to make it happen. How can we live another way? How can we be both creative and
clear-headed? What is the secret to our
continued survival on this planet? There’s a middle way, somewhere between
punitive austerity and careless indulgence.
And as the sun moves towards its point of balance at the equinox, it’s
time to find it.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

So my wife
and I just bought a 13-year-old Mercedes over the phone, with the help of her
brother, the Car Whisperer, in Florida.
This feels a little unreal to me, but we’ll see it tomorrow when we
drive out to Virginia.

At the same
time that all this was happening – with multiple phone calls and computer
messages - my keyboard suddenly stopped furnishing me with apostrophes. Everything
I wrote sounded like a texting teenager, words glued together every which
way.

Is life
moving faster? Can I keep up?

It’s
definitely moving faster, now that Jupiter is in Leo, and the sun is there too,
in its own sign. There’s an unsettling sense of acceleration. Some things are planned – including our six
staggered out-of-town guests – and some things are half planned and half spontaneous
– like this car. We’ve been looking for
one, in a half-hearted way, for more than a year.

But that’s
the thing. Nothing is half-hearted
now. Leo rules the heart, and so the
heart’s wishes suddenly become paramount.
And the heart is all about what’s immediate, the raw emotion and
sensation of the moment. It squeezes,
lets go, squeezes again, and it’s bursting with blood and will and urges.

These days,
we live in a very otherworldly world, with many things just beyond the reach of
sight and touch and taste. And yet, we
still move among these things, making choices, making decisions, making an
imprint. So much of our lives are
virtual, lived in the mystical and esoteric cloud landscape our people have
developed.

What would
people in the past think of this? There
have always been those who wandered around talking to themselves in the street,
but now they’re the norm. There’s an
inwardness to the lives we lead, but there’s also an ability to see far things
that are away, in time and distance.
People focus on their small machines, and find that these are doorways
to the whole world.

But it’s a
world that conforms to our preferences, filtering out whatever we don’t want to
see. And soon we will have these portals
on the insides of our glasses, or as a little window on the upper right side of
our eyeballs. In the middle of a
conversation, a person will glance to the left and find the perfect Shakespeare
quote for whatever topic just came up.
Or the perfect joke. Or a way to
refute the argument that’s just been made.

All this
cloudiness comes from Neptune, which has been in its own sign for a couple of
years now, and will be there for another dozen.
The mystery, the strangeness, and the detachment will increase over the
next decade.

But right
now, with the sun and Jupiter in Leo, there’s a reaction against this, a desire
for raw, exciting, activity. The new moon of July 26 set the tone for this lunar
cycle, and it gives its flavor to the month of August. The sun was conjunct Jupiter at this new moon, magnifying all the
Leo traits. There’s passion, courage, creativity,
playfulness, pride, and a strong sense of honor. And there’s
a need to take risks, to leap into the game and gamble everything.

And no, this
is not particularly peaceful. All the fire signs tend towards a certain
amount of struggle, and Leo is the fixed fire sign that does not give up until
the enemy is utterly vanquished. After
winning, Leo is generous, magnanimous, ready to shake hands with the former foe
and turn all that energy in another direction.

Looking at
the war between Israel and Palestine, this doesn’t look good for either side,
since both are willful and tenacious. And so we have this bloody war, likely to get
bloodier before it’s done.

Mars – the planet
of war - is also in a fixed sign, making for even more drawn-out conflicts. Mars is in Scorpio, and like all water signs,
this gives a long memory for old wounds.
Both Palestine and Israel are the walking wounded, both threatened to
the core by their treatment at the hands of the rest of the world. And for both of them, fighting has become a
necessary way of life.

With the
long memory of Mars in Scorpio, the vanquished – and it will almost assuredly
be Palestine – will just go undercover, to regroup and fight again. Those tunnels are associated with Scorpio,
the sign of secrets. And Scorpio is also
the phoenix, who is reborn from its own ashes.

And so what’s
the answer? It comes from the heart energy of Leo. The heart grows from giving, creating, and
loving, and these are also the ways that a wounded heart can be healed. The natural magnanimity of Leo will not
immediately stop war. People can give
money, time, words and attention, and it may all be siphoned off into the uses
of war, with some of it maintaining the people in charge.

But
eventually, heart energy, if continually and freely given, manifests in
something good. There is a critical
mass, and we’ve been saying this for years - but it’s true. The fiery energy of Jupiter in Leo, with the
sun joining it this month, can do this.

And peace is
not the word I would use to describe the aims of Jupiter in Leo. I would say health is the end goal, and
sometimes health requires conflict.
Challenges are always necessary for this Leo energy, and these challenges
need to be immediate and exciting. But these
endless wars and power skirmishes are not worthy of the great spirit of Jupiter
in Leo. No, this is a sign that can take
us back to living in our bodies, in the moment, passionately involved in the world
around us.

So don’t
look for peace. But move towards
health. Let yourself live – playfully, passionately
– with all the uncertainty that the world offers these days. There’s lots of ways to escape from our
bodies and our surroundings, but your own beating heart has a different
message. Anything can happen.

Monday, June 30, 2014

I had a good laugh this morning,
googling Ann Coulter’s rant against soccer and reading it aloud to my
spouse. I kept saying, “She’s being
funny, right? She’s not serious with
this.” It read like good satire. Soccer, a sign of the nation’s moral decay???
A liberal conspiracy? No room for individual expression? Non-athletic?
Please. Is she watching the same
sport I am?

I’ve never been a sports fan, but somewhere
in my long and eventful life, I did start watching soccer. It rubbed off on me, like things do. And I guess it had mostly to do with living
overseas, in Ecuador and in Germany, countries that took the game seriously. Living
around all that fervent passion, I had to start paying more attention. And now I like the game, although I’m still
not all that sporty, and you’d have to tie me down to get me to watch baseball
or football.

One of Ann Coulter’s points against
soccer is that it’s foreign. Which for
her means it’s un-American. Why do those
two things go together, for her? What’s so terrible about “foreignness”?

Coulter was raised in a wealthy white
town in Connecticut, and to her that’s the American Normal. When
she complains about foreigners infecting these shores with the soccer virus,
she’s saying she doesn’t altogether trust anyone who doesn’t look, speak or
think like her. I’m sure the first
inhabitants of this country had that same sinking feeling, when they saw those
big white sails on the horizon, and then those smelly guys climbed down from
the boats, muskets in hand. It doesn’t
always go well, when strange people arrive.

But change is inevitable, and
demographic change is the norm, all through history and everywhere in the
world. Coulter’s desire to keep this
country as her pristine little enclave is as unrealistic as that of the
indigenous people of the Americas.
Moreover, there are ways and ways of invading. Invading with soccer balls and ethnic
restaurants is way friendlier than with musket-balls.

And one reason that I’m back in the
States is that it is a country that’s changing. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be living here; I’d be in Canada, where my spouse and I first
planned to immigrate, about seven years ago – because we could get married there. The changing demographics, the leftward popular
bent, and yes, the soccer – all that has made the US a place where my wife and
I can live – happily, comfortably and safely.

It’s clear that Coulter is on the
wrong side of history, but she’s not alone.
There are a lot of people who see some lost paradise in the all-white
suburbs or the small towns of their youth.
Whatever they didn’t have back then, nobody needs.

As July begins, Jupiter is in Cancer,
the sign of Home and Family, the most sentimental sign in the zodiac. It’s been here for a year, and we’ve seen a
lot of nostalgia during this time, on both sides of the cultural divide. New families come to the US, carrying their traditions,
planting them in new soil. Sometimes children come across the border alone,
hoping to rejoin families they haven’t seen in years. And established families learn, or don’t
learn, to adapt to the changes in their towns and cities and
neighborhoods.

Some are scared, some are really deeply
scared, and some have guns. But sporadic
gunfire doesn’t change the fact of change.

That aspect of dramatic transformation,
the Uranus/Pluto square, isn’t over yet.
But it’s not a strong influence in July, since Pluto has been
retrograding out of range. And so this
month, you get a lot of politicos repeating the same message over and over, marking
time, fighting with each other without much conviction, like scrappy but
well-fed dogs. When Pluto goes direct
again in September, some new life will enter the political arena, one way or
another, and it looks like a hard-fought election season.

However, there is a definite
stylistic change in July, with Jupiter entering Leo in mid-month, just a few
days after the final match of the World Cup. It will be in this sign for a little over a
year. Leo is the sign ruled by the sun,
an open-hearted sign given to celebration, ritual, art, and drama. It’s a good time for all of us to cut loose,
to live larger. As a fire sign, Leo is
not always peaceful, but it encourages activism on all sides, so it keeps
things moving.

Last time Jupiter was in Leo, millions
of people were in the streets protesting the impending war in Iraq. That didn’t prevent the war from happening. But there are lessons in failure as well as
in success, and political activism is a skill that takes time. And this is a different era, and we live in a
different country, demographically speaking.
We live in a country where people watch soccer.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

This is
peace itself. It’s a wonderful interlude
between two intense womyn’s events. I’m
at the Hotel Bougainvillea in San José, Costa Rica. My wife was coming here on business, and so I
tagged along, and now her work is done, and she’s joining me for a weekend of
pleasure and leisure.

Aside from
going out and getting drunk on coffee blends, I haven’t done much. I’ve walked along flower-lined paths, lounged
by the pool, and watched the afternoon rain from the balcony of our room. Now my body is deliciously relaxed and my
mind empty. Occasionally, a thought will
emerge and I’ll watch it slide across my consciousness, searching for a
foothold. But all my mental filing cabinets are gone,
replaced by birdsong and warm breezes.

It wasn’t
like this last week. I was at
Womonwrites, a lesbian writer’s conference held just south of Atlanta. It was a place of verbal abundance, between
the readings from talented writers, the workshops full of furious writing, and
the impromptu conversations between the lake and the dining hall. I did my astrological thing, turning the
archetypal language of astrology into words relevant to women’s lives. As always, the feedback was complex and exciting.

Next week,
I’ll be at Where Womyn Gather, a womyn’s spirituality festival near Carbondale,
Pennsylvania, and it will be just as intense.
All sorts of women, transplanted from their ordinary lives, will look
for experiences that take them to a higher plane – through drumming, meditation,
ritual, and yes, through the charged symbol system of astrology.

I love those
womyn’s spaces. But I also belong here,
in this place of perfect peace. Even
though I’m in a hotel room, it feels just like home to me.

And that
figures, because Jupiter’s still in the sign Cancer, spreading those
comfortable, warm vibes, and Mercury just entered this sign as well. As I write, the moon is here too. And Cancer is the sign of home. It’s the sign of belonging, and it heightens
both the sense that you don’t fit, and the sense that you do, depending on your
circumstances.

This is a
time when your surroundings affect you more, so that you truly inhabit the
space you’re in, and sometimes it feels like it’s inhabiting you. Jupiter in Cancer brings you inside, into
interiors that hold you, and towards people with whom you share intimate
moments.

Cancer is aligned
to women’s energy, since it’s connected to the nurturing we all receive from
the first woman in our lives. Cancer is
also a sign of memory, and so, during much of this interlude in Costa Rica, my
spouse and I tell each stories of things
that happened during the week we were apart.
We both spent time with women, with old friends, with people with whom
we have a long shared past. These
stories lead to older stories, and we learn from them as we retell them.

I’m
experiencing time more slowly these days, and I know this has something to do
with being on vacation in a tropical paradise.
But it’s also because Mercury is slowing down, preparatory to going
retrograde on June 7. Mercury retrograde is all about living in the
past, recapturing the experiences you’ve forgotten, tying up the loose strings
you’ve left lying about. It will spend all
the rest of June retrograde, so everyone will have time to tidy up the past, to
make amends, to reminisce, and to heal.

Besides the
emotional largess of these Cancer influences, there’s also the Gemini influence
in June, and this is more distracting and faster-moving, with a focus on mental
activity and communication. The sun is
in Gemini now, so there is an undercurrent of chatter. And mid-month, Mercury retrogrades back into
Gemini. Things become more scattered,
especially during the following three days (June 17 to 20). After this, the sun enters gentle Cancer, and
the focus returns to feelings.

This would
be a mostly mellow month, if it weren’t for Mars. Mars is very purposeful these days, having
just emerged from three months retrograde, recharged and ready for action. It’s in Libra, the sign of ethics, equality, justice
and judgment, so there’s an emphasis on accountability, and it’s making hard
aspects to the planets of change, Uranus and Pluto.

This echoes
the cardinal cross of April, but in a milder way. There’s time between these aspects; not
everything happens at once.

However, it
is best to be cautious around these times.
The Mars/Pluto square, exact June 14, can indicate dangerous situations,
especially when you’re trying to do the right thing. For example, you could go out in the road to
move a turtle, and get hit by a Mack truck.
Your intentions are good, but the danger lies in pitting yourself
against forces that are much greater than you are. So unless you just want to go down in history
- sooner rather than later - it’s wise to check things twice.

The
Mars/Uranus opposition, exact June 25, is even more prone to accidents and
technical problems. Uranus’ energy is
swift-moving, electric, and quick to overturn existing structures. This is not
the time to stand under trees during lightning storms, especially if you have
any planets near 16 degrees of cardinal signs.
I’ve got the moon at 16 Cancer, and I’m not going to cross a street
without looking both ways, and probably up as well. Who knows what could fall out of the sky?

These two
aspects come along like a clean-up crew, startling the retrograde Mercury out
of its reminiscences, reminding everybody that some structures still need to
topple. They’re very creative and
exciting, and so doors can suddenly swing open this month. Don’t take that for granted, though, as doors
can also slam shut with equal abruptness.
It’s about rearranging things, and with Mars in Libra, the idea is to do
this according to higher principles.
Since everybody has a different idea of what those principles are, this
can mean conflict.

Luckily, the
retrograde Mercury keeps reminding us of our past mistakes. And Jupiter in Cancer brings it down to what
feels right. If it doesn’t feel right,
if it makes your skin crawl, it’s not a good thing. We all
want peace, kindness, and a sense of belonging.
We all want to feel at home in this moment, on this planet. This is the ideal, and we keep returning to
it, over and over.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

April’s been a tough month for a lot of people. If you’re reading this, hey, you
survived. Mostly, there was a sense of
pressure coming from all directions, and there were also quite a few accidents
and health scares among my family and friends.

And spring never really got a foothold. As I write this, two days of cold rain have
flooded my yard. This has happened
before, and I know it will drain when the water stops, if it ever stops. The birds don’t seem to mind it; they perch
on half-submerged logs and peck at the bugs floating by. But it makes me nervous, especially when
thunder rumbles and signals a bout of even harder rain. And when my phone makes a sudden jangling
sound, warning me of flash floods.

Tomorrow begins a new month, and it should be a calmer
one. Gradually the Jupiter/Uranus/Pluto
T-square loosens its grip on us. Emotions will cool down, and rebellious urges
diminish.

The Uranus/Pluto T-square is not completely gone; it will be
back twice more, bookending the next winter.
So we’re still living through a tense time, geopolitically. But this particular passage has been the most
stressful, with Jupiter - the planet of hubris – encouraging a tendency to
strut and goad. We’ve seen this
especially in the Ukraine, a stress point between east and west, a country
slowly being ripped in two.

For a leader struggling to maintain power, in a country
which doesn’t have much in the way of term limits, war is not a bad
option. War unleashes emotion, and if
you know how to surf that emotion, you can have a sweet ride. World leaders through the ages have practiced
this art, relatively safe for them, not so safe for the young men in the
field. Vladimir Putin promises his
people excitement, victory, expansion, and a slap in the face of NATO.

And no matter how reluctant Obama is to wage war – as he
should be – he may not be able to escape it.
Everyone who runs for president promises to kill the bad guys. Like the pope’s set of ceremonial robes, the
machinery of war comes with the office.

And many Americans want it too. They watch TV, they go to movies, they know
the heroes from the villains. They want
to see Vlad’s butt kicked, and they want President Obama to do it, one way or
another. Hey, he’s the Guy, right? His currently low poll numbers could be a
byproduct of his reluctance to go in with guns blazing.

Although his pride may be hurt - and we see this because
Pluto is currently inconjunct his sun – he has little impetus to wage war. Unlike Putin, Obama won’t be in power
forever, and he’s thinking more about long-term legacies than popularity
polls.

But May won’t be quite as belligerent as April was. For one thing, Jupiter and Saturn will make a
watery trine – between May 17 and 30 – and this will be a stabilizing
force. It will be good for the economies
of the world - for trade, for access to food and water, and for humanitarian
aid. In harmonious aspect, Jupiter and
Saturn give wisdom, balance, and controlled growth.

This is not to say the threat of war is over. We live in a very emotional time, and this
has to do with Jupiter moving through the tender sign Cancer. Cancer is a kind, sympathetic sign, but that
doesn’t mean that it’s always peace-loving.
The U.S. has a Cancer sun, and so it’s a very sentimental,
family-oriented place, but at the same time, there’s a tendency to blow people
away if they don’t share the same sentiments.
It’s a movie cliché that, in the midst of mayhem, a puppy or baby gets
rescued.

However, in harmonious aspect to Jupiter, Saturn plays the
role of the adult in the room. It points
out the long-term effects of any course of action, as well as the underlying
causes. Saturn is in Scorpio, a watery
sign of transformation, and this isn’t the easiest place for the planet of
structure. But Saturn in Scorpio points
to possibility of building structures that will aid in transformation, that
will promote a better world, given time.
Saturn is always about time.

With three outer planets in water signs, though, it may be a
wet month. I look out at my yard and
can’t imagine that it could get any wetter.
But all these watery planets don’t just signify rainstorms and
flooding. Water is a connecting force,
dissolving differences in the universal experience of wetness. We’re born in a surge of water, and inside
we’re mostly water too.

Water carries away all the old junk, redistributes it,
brings people together, and creates a muddy fertility. With the structural help of the
Jupiter/Saturn trine, we can do some rebuilding this month, working through our
immediate emotional reactions. We can
find the points of intersection between our needs and interests, and those of
our neighbors in the world. Us humans, we’re all family, and that doesn’t mean we
don’t fight. But it also means it’s not
so easy to get away from each other.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Astrologers all over are
flipping out over April 2014. I’ve been
mostly flipping out over the weather lately, since like all humans, most of my
cranial alarm bells are set for whatever is going on in my back yard. And my back yard has been through a lot. Ice,
snow, floods, and any minute, I’m expecting the four horsemen of the apocalypse
to trot on by.

Maybe, too, I’m focused on my
back yard because the larger trends seem so daunting. There’s a palpable sense that some dramatic
historical drama is being set up, that
the forces are aligning for a major change. The T-square is already in place, and edging
closer all the time. Uranus, Pluto and
Jupiter are all in tense aspect to each other, with these aspects exact on
April 20 and 21.

Pluto is about slow,
inexorable transformations, while Uranus is about sudden rebellions and abrupt
turns. Jupiter is about business, economics,
law, principles, and community, and all these things can swing wildly back and
forth. Since it’s currently in Cancer,
Jupiter is also about the homeland, the sense of belonging.

On April 22 and 23, Mars
joins the fray, plugging into the empty space and turning the T-square into a
cross. Mars is the planet of action, the
trigger planet. So this is when people
could reach a moment of resolution. This
could express itself in angry words, flying bullets, or tanks in the
street.

Of course, that’s already
true in Venezuela, as the protests drag on.
My spouse’s aunt says that her neighborhood in San Cristóbal is
desolate, a maze of ripped-up streets.
It used to be that if you saw a gun, you were being mugged, but now the
gunshot in the streets comes from the military, or from the government gangs
that patrol on motorbikes.

Things are tense
everywhere. We’ve already seen Russia
carve off a piece of the Ukraine, abruptly altering the world map. The people in the Crimea have had to figure
out where they belong, as they adjust to this shift in the boundaries of their
world. They are either celebrating a
return to the Russian motherland, or packing everything and bustling the whole family
out the door, or just staying put and feeling anxious and displaced.

And we’ve seen the earth
itself move, in various places. A mountain
lost its grip in Washington state, swallowing most of a small town. There’ve been a bunch of little quakes in
California. Will we see more of this as
these aspects grow stronger in April?

These almost simultaneous
oppositions are very rare, and that’s why astrologers are getting so excited. Especially from April 20 to 23, it’s best to
be a little more cautious than usual, especially if you have any planets close
to 13° of cardinal signs. The U.S. sun
is at 13° Cancer, so, as a nation, we will be affected: our priorities, our sense of identity, our national
ego. Venezuela, with the sun at 12°
Cancer, will also have to redefine itself. And Russia has Uranus at 13° Cancer,
indicating an even more radical shift.

Vladimir Putin has the sun at
13° Libra, so he will be right in the middle of what’s going on. Mars, the trigger planet, is right on his sun
– his leadership, his sense of purpose, his ego. He’s definitely ready for a showdown. Barack Obama has nothing in the sensitive
range of cardinal signs, and is clearly not that interested in mixing it up
with a cowboy, but with Neptune currently opposing his Pluto, some old karmic
power issues are up for him.

When I first looked at
Putin’s chart, especially in terms of the karmic influences, it definitely gave
me pause. He has a Leo conjunction
involving his midheaven, Pluto, the south node, and Black Moon Lilith. And to me, this says that he has a deep
hunger for conquest, left over from a past life in which he didn’t quite get
his chance to run the world. When I see
this, and when I think of the official homophobia and covert anti-Semitism in
Russia, I get nervous.

Adding to the charged
atmosphere this month, there are also two eclipses in April. The first, the total lunar eclipse that goes
along with the full moon on April 15, is the most volatile one, since Mercury
is at 13° Aries, side by side with the fiery planet of change, Uranus. This could mean sudden shifts in intention,
communication, or process. There could
be fighting words, a challenge, an audacious plan.

By the new moon of April 29 –
which brings us an annular solar eclipse – the pattern is dissipating a bit,
and a few Taurus influences help to ground things. Still, the energies of the cardinal cross
and the eclipses will have lasting repercussions. Countries, allegiances, and ideas will be
juggled this month, and this new state of things will comprise our reality for
quite a while.

The cardinal cross indicates
a time when things are being broken down.
We can all agree that some things need to break down, and to be rebuilt
in a better way. But the process itself
is turbulent, scary, and sometimes dangerous.
So it’s time to take a wider view, a historical view. We may all have to look beyond our backyard,
and notice what’s coming down the road.

Friday, February 28, 2014

Venezuela is not my homeland,
but it was my home for nine years, so I have a strong connection to the
country. I hold it in my heart: the warm and energetic people, the parrots
swinging through the sky, the powerful statue of María Lionza in the middle of
the Caracas Autopista.

And it’s my wife’s
country. She’s the one who’s been losing
sleep these past weeks, anxious about the bloodshed in the streets, angry about
the repression, passing along crucial and hidden information to others on
facebook. She’s the one who’s been writing
long tracts, clarifying the situation for those who are still buying the
government line.

We both run into this a
lot: leftists who feel it’s important to
support any government that calls itself socialist. But history has shown us that leftist leaders
are just as likely to suppress protest, to lose sight of human dignity, and to
become hungry for more and more power. For
example, you can say good things about literacy and health care in Cuba, but
you’re also dealing with a country that has inadequate mechanisms for dissent, challenge
and change, and so responds to these things by controlling people’s movements
and choices.

And that’s pretty much what
people in Venezuela are ticked off about.
They are also frustrated with living conditions – one of the highest
murder rates in the world, corruption at all levels of government, silencing of
the press, tight currency controls, rocketing inflation, and constant scarcity. And the Venezuelans I’ve known are a vocal,
confident people, who are not about to keep their mouths shut and go along with
whatever line the government is feeding them.

And no, this doesn’t mean
that they’re stooges of the US, controlled by the CIA, or any of that. Neither does it mean they’re fascists, as president
Nicolás Maduro keeps claiming. It just means that they have voices, voices to
sing and shout with, and they want more power over their own lives, and some
positive changes in their society.

Venezuelans are angry, not
terrorized - even though a dozen so young protestors have been killed, and many
more tear-gassed, peppered with buckshot, or arrested. But Maduro’s responses have just made them
angrier. This rebellion is being shared
on lots of little cameras, even though there have been blockages in Internet
access and Twitter. Still, the videos of
National Guardsmen kicking and hitting unarmed protestors are getting
around.

As an astrologer, what do I
think will happen next in Venezuela?
This is definitely a watershed time, with Pluto closely opposing the
Venezuelan sun. It’s a tense,
pressurized struggle for power, with the health and well-being of the country
at stake. The basic question is one of
identity, with the government basing its vision on the Cuban model, and the
majority of the people struggling for something looser, freer, and more natural
to them.

And yes, I actually do think
Maduro is an idealist, with his sun in Sagittarius squaring Jupiter in Pisces –
although it’s true Pinochet had the same configuration. Maduro is a true believer, someone who has
found both temporal power and inspiration in the same philosophy. He’s also an emotional person, with a
preponderance of water signs, and his success has largely come from his ability
to attach himself to the right people, to demonstrate that he’s caring and
trustworthy.

His Achilles heel is that he worries
that he’s not big or important enough, and this is probably what’s caused him
to react so fiercely to the protestors.
He’s acting from an old ego wound, so often a cause of dangerously
defensive behavior. In November 2013,
weeks before the municipal elections, he invited Venezuelans to help themselves
freely to all the merchandise in appliance stores, with the protection of the
military. He figured it would make him
popular, and help his party win, and mostly it worked. Now he’s extending the Carnival vacation by
two extra days, again working hard to win the hearts (if not the minds) of the
people.

And I do think things will
calm down fairly soon, perhaps from protestor fatigue combined with the
temptations of Carnival, perhaps from a few government concessions. Mars retrogrades
on March 1, and Saturn on March 2, giving a general need to go back and take
care of untended obligations.

The retrograde Mars in Libra could
mean a reversal of course both for the protestors and the government. This indicates a time to reassess one’s
strategies, tools and methods, and figure out if they are actually having the
desired effect. And this is one of the
problems of the Venezuelan protest movement, a diffusion of goals and
solutions. On both sides, there may need to be a lot of processing about ethics
and principles.

With Mars in Libra, both
sides will claim the mantle of old revolutionary icons, carving Simón Bolivar
neatly in half. However, as independent,
progressive and enlightened as Bolivar was, he was no socialist, and in fact,
he could easily have been labeled an oligarch – one of Maduro’s favorite insults,
inherited from Chávez. Bolivar believed
that the landed gentry should be the ones in charge. But there’s not always a lot of connection
between the real human being and the icon he or she becomes.

In any event, there are some
gentler influences during the next month. Jupiter is also just about to go
direct and pass over Venezuela’s sun in Cancer, and tomorrow’s new moon makes a
promising trine to Jupiter, as well. These
indicate more generosity, less defensiveness, and an expansion of
opportunities. And so people may make a
little more room for each other, and work out some tentative agreements.

March is more cerebral than
February was, and it’s a chance for the movement to enter a new and more
thoughtful phase. But there’s still an
emphasis on justice. At the new moon on
March 1, the square between Jupiter and Uranus is very strong, and this is an
independent, visionary, forward-looking aspect, hungry for positive change,
eager for self-expression, intolerant of repression. This aspect has been predominant for weeks
now, and was exact a few days ago, on February 26. It will continue to affect us all until early
May.

And so all over the world, we
see people in the streets, making it clear what they believe, what they want,
what they’re willing to fight for. And thousands
of passionate, clamoring people do make a difference, sooner or later, one way
or another. To speak out is to indicate
faith in a different future, and so this is a time of unrest but also a time of
hope.

Friday, January 31, 2014

My spouse and I went to
California for a week in January, and got away from winter. Walking into the brilliant sunlight of Los
Angeles, I felt that I was on some gorgeous golden planet, far from
reality. After only a week, I forgot
winter; it seemed like some odd, improbable concept.

When it was time to fly back
to DC, we found out that National Airport had been closed all day because of
the snow. Our plane change was in Detroit,
where everyone but us deplaned in parkas and overcoats. When we were loaded onto our flight, the
pilot told us that if we couldn’t land in DC, well, we’d land someplace else.

We did land, hearing that we
were only the fourth flight to do so that day. Outside, the air was thick with snow, and our
cab ride home seemed interminable. The
Beltway was a long gray ribbon, with a few slow, half-blind cars bumbling along. Then we were dragging our suitcases through
the snow to the lighted front door, where my mother-in-law and
grandmother-in-law welcomed us home.

Since then, the song “California
Dreaming” hasn’t left my head (except for a very brief phase when it was
replaced by “Da Doo Run Run”). It’s snowed
again, gotten really cold, iced, gotten slightly warmer, melted some, and then
re-snowed. Icicles have dripped from the
roof onto the welcome mat, sending a mixed message. There are treacherous slats of ice on the
sidewalk, but it doesn’t much matter, because nobody wants to walk
anywhere.

Of course, it’s been dreary,
but not really abnormal for this semi-Southern, semi-Northern city. It’s my Southern friends who are really
confused, seeing snow as a rare creature that doesn’t usually visit their
neighborhoods. Like polar bears searching for their missing
ice floes, they’ve been flummoxed by the strange weather patterns.

And if I was in California,
if I was back there in the land of my pervasive inner pop tune, I would be
dealing with a historic level of drought.
Everywhere, the weather is pushing towards extremes beyond the human
comfort level. It’s ironic, in that it’s
been our own pursuit of comfort that has triggered the extremes we are
beginning to experience.

Jupiter is in Cancer, the
sign of comfort. Cancer is a sweet, nurturing,
childlike water sign that gives strong attachments to family, home, and neighborhood. It’s kind, sentimental, empathic, and not
particularly fond of the unfamiliar. But
Jupiter has been dealing with an opposition from Pluto, representing the forces
of transformation, and so this has not been a restful time. Everyone has been a bit tense lately.

Earlier in January, the chemical
spill affecting the water in West Virginia was an example of this aspect. Pluto deals with toxins, pressure, stress, anxieties,
and underlying cracks in the system. My healer
says that lots of people have been discovering boils, pimples and abscesses, examples
of hidden poisons coming to the surface.
And of course, another random shooting incident – this one a few days
ago at a mall in Columbia, Maryland – makes everyone feel more stressed, less
comfortable, less safe. While most of us
just bite our nails, some people deal with intense anxiety by shooting
strangers.

This Jupiter/Pluto opposition
continues through the first half of February, and it overlaps with the even
more volatile Jupiter/Uranus square, which goes into orb the first week of
February, and will hang around the rest of the winter. Uranus deals with sudden shocks, disruptions
and rebellions, and the Jupiter/Uranus square can signal an abundance of these. So Jupiter in Cancer is not going to spend
much time with its feet up, sipping hot cocoa before the fire this winter. There are wolves at the door. We will all be shaken
out of our comfort zones.

This may spell bad news for
the more toxic leaders of the world, as they try to hold on to power in the
face of the public will. This is
generally a losing battle, and even more so these days. But those who are addicted to money and power
are not going down without a fight.

And what about the Olympics? This is not the best time for them, especially
in such a war-torn region. But looking at the planetary patterns, I see a
very different kind of problem.

The day before the Olympics
are due to start, Mercury goes retrograde in Pisces, right next to Neptune, and
this is a particularly vague, confusing, disconnected influence. This doesn’t look like bombs and mayhem, but
rather like everybody wandering off in the wrong direction and never making it
to the finish line. There are quite a
lot of things that could go wrong, many of them having to do with mixed signals
and bad communication.

As we know, Sochi lies in the
warmest region in Russian, and there has actually been no snow there this
winter. Snow is there, however, well-guarded, kept in
snow vaults under thermal blankets, glued together with special snow salt. This sounds like a pretty vulnerable situation
when the eyes of the world are upon you, and when Mercury is retrograding in a
water sign. Is this alien snow really
going to work out? It sounds like the beginning
of a remake of the Blob.

Bad communication can also be
dangerous with the abundance of uniformed men and women who will be everywhere
in Sochi. They’ll be holding lethal
pieces of hardware while listening to garbled messages through their
ear-pieces. And there’s another
inhibiting influence a few days after the Olympics begin, the sun/Saturn square,
which tends to delay everything. With
all this, I’m beginning to wonder if the Olympics will even happen.

Whatever happens, Mercury will
look on laughing, in its trickster aspect.
And so some of the excitement generated by the rebellious Jupiter/Uranus
square will fizzle out, and some of the threats will fail without anyone ever
knowing about them. Some demonstrations
will be derailed because of poor planning, and some bomb-makers will take the
wrong bus and never make it to the target area.

And some people will just
have changes of heart. There will be those
who suddenly look at their guns and bombs, and don’t like what they see, and toss
them in the nearest dumpster. Some people,
saddened by all the wrong around them, will join together and protest more
peacefully. Many will recognize the
power and purity of non-violence.

Pisces is a strong spiritual
influence, and so some folks will start praying more, and some will have
powerful and beautiful visions. These
may be visions of connection, of oneness with other people and with the
earth. And sometimes these visions will
mean going backwards, making corrections, asking for forgiveness, and realigning
with the best in oneself.

And that’s not necessarily
comfortable either. But in the end, it
may be what saves us all.